Advice: A less hectic workday for my D&D characters

[Doug McCrae]

If the Players, and you, actually don't know how many encounters the PC's will face in any given day, it makes the game far, Far, FAR more exciting, suspenseful, and unpredictable.

...

When your Players don't "know" when it's time to rest, they will play better and more conservatively.

Surely skilled players will scout out the dungeon and determine how many potential encounters they face?

 

[pming]

Hiya!

You really need to read those rules carefully.

Or maybe it's that your players have much to learn when other comes to gaming the rest rules.

The rules are exceedingly generous when it comes to rests not being interrupted by combat etc. Read it.

And with abilities like Rope Trick, Tiny Hut (and later Teleport etc) naive measures such as wandering monsters simply do not work as rest deterrent.

You're probably right...I need to go back and re-read those rules. We haven't played 5e since before last Christmas. As for spells, another indicator of my experiences with the Rest Mechanics is that nobody in our group has gotten a PC past 7th level...so there's that.

What I have done for my Tomb of Annihilation campaign is to ban free long rests in the jungle.

That's a good indicator on how drastically you need to change the rules to get their own encounter pace assumptions to work!

And thus, it serves well as an indicator on exactly how badly the RAW works, once your players catch onto how to really use the rules in their favor.

What I mean by this is, I would much rather that the rules were written by someone that realized how the character abilities interacted with the rest rules. As it is now, that cannot be the case given how naive and easily circumvented they are.

Hmmm...I guess I'll defer to your RAW experience on this one, CapnZapp. ... ... You win this round, CapnZapp. You win this round... [muuaha-ha-ha-ha.... // slowly drifts backwards, fading into the shadows...]



^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Tony Vargas]

What I mean by this is, I would much rather that the rules were written by someone that realized how the character abilities interacted with the rest rules. As it is now, that cannot be the case given how naive and easily circumvented they are.

I know the old adage about assuming malice when incompetence would also serve, but I don't believe anyone could have returned Rope Trick to 2nd level, or re-written Tiny Hut they way they did, and not /intend/ that a party with an old-school-CaW player running a wizard wouldn't, as a matter of course, choose to have very short 'days' whenever it was remotely workable within the scenario, with the inevitable impact on class & encounter balance - as a 'reward for skilled play,' of course.

You're probably right...I need to go back and re-read those rules. We haven't played 5e since before last Christmas. As for spells, another indicator of my experiences with the Rest Mechanics is that nobody in our group has gotten a PC past 7th level...so there's that.

High enough level to have been casting Rope Trick a while.

The group I gamed the most with in the 3.x era never had a problem with a wizard abusing Haste & quickened spell or polymorph or a natural-spell abusing druid. Because no one ever played a wizard or druid, at all. Not because no one would've wanted to (druid & magic-user were my favorite classes to play back in the day), but because it was just not worth it to push the campaign over that particular precipice.

Hmmm...I guess I'll defer to your RAW experience on this one, CapnZapp. ... ... You win this round, CapnZapp. You win this round... [muuaha-ha-ha-ha.... // slowly drifts backwards, fading into the shadows...]



^_^

Paul L. Ming

I had no idea the Capn was a super-hero Capn, not a sea/military Capn, or that you've been omitting "the Merciless" from your sig all this time....

 

[CapnZapp]

I know the old adage about assuming malice when incompetence would also serve, but I don't believe anyone could have returned Rope Trick to 2nd level, or re-written Tiny Hut they way they did, and not /intend/ that a party with an old-school-CaW player running a wizard wouldn't, as a matter of course, choose to have very short 'days' whenever it was remotely workable within the scenario, with the inevitable impact on class & encounter balance - as a 'reward for skilled play,' of course.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic here.

Skilled play, indeed.

 

[jasper]

...And with abilities like Rope Trick, Tiny Hut (and later Teleport etc) naive measures such as wandering monsters simply do not work as rest deterrent.

What I have done for my Tomb of Annihilation campaign is to ban free long rests in the jungle.

That's a good indicator on how drastically you need to change the rules to get their own encounter pace assumptions to work!

...

No the CAMPAIGN for tomb is set up so the jungle is cake walk. Max of 3 encounters per day according to the book. So for Campaign Chapter 2 is stage dressing.
If I counted correctly the quickest way to OMU was 30 days. At 6 encounters per day that is 180. If 5 E still has 13 encounters equal a level then you are level 13 before OMU.
Zapp is on purpose mixing the DMG recommendations for an average adventure with a print adventure which on purpose is trying to limit the max level as you enter the final dungeon.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Not sure if you're being sarcastic here.

Skilled play, indeed.

I prefer to think of it as cynical, but sarcastic works, too....

 

[CapnZapp]

No the CAMPAIGN for tomb is set up so the jungle is cake walk. Max of 3 encounters per day according to the book. So for Campaign Chapter 2 is stage dressing.
If I counted correctly the quickest way to OMU was 30 days. At 6 encounters per day that is 180. If 5 E still has 13 encounters equal a level then you are level 13 before OMU.
Zapp is on purpose mixing the DMG recommendations for an average adventure with a print adventure which on purpose is trying to limit the max level as you enter the final dungeon.

Please give me a page reference for your claim the jungle is intentionally a cake walk.

(I'll save you the trouble - there isn't one)

PS. Don't make claims about my motivations. It's unbecoming.

 

[jasper]

Please give me a page reference for your claim the jungle is intentionally a cake walk.

(I'll save you the trouble - there isn't one)

PS. Don't make claims about my motivations. It's unbecoming.

Check the wandering monster encounters. I think 16 or better on a d20. No more that 3 times a day.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Our solution:

Short rest as is.
Night's sleep: recover one quarter hd and half hp
Long rest: a night's sleep and an unexhausting day. Exploring a dungeon with few encounters in between and mainly investigating counts. Travelling for 8h+ does not.
That way you naturally have interesting travels and interesting dungeons.
A good solution for reducing encounters is having 2 or 3 smaller encounters in short succession with bigger rests between them. So you have 6 to 8 encounters with 2 short rests.
That won't work all the time but it is a quite natural pacing as sound of battle attracts reenforcements and if you prevent too much sound, enemies might notice the absence of guards at least once in a while so a short rest will be disturbed. This is why having 1h short rests is better than 5 or 10 minute rests.

 

[Oofta]

I know the old adage about assuming malice when incompetence would also serve, but I don't believe anyone could have returned Rope Trick to 2nd level, or re-written Tiny Hut they way they did, and not /intend/ that a party with an old-school-CaW player running a wizard wouldn't, as a matter of course, choose to have very short 'days' whenever it was remotely workable within the scenario, with the inevitable impact on class & encounter balance - as a 'reward for skilled play,' of course.

Probably off topic a bit, but the last time someone tried to do a tiny hut in enemy territory, the hobgoblins found them. Being the smart military types, the patrol called for reinforcements. When the reinforcements arrived, they proceeded to bury the hut with the people inside. The first rank blocked the view with over-sized shields while the back rank started throwing brush and dried wood onto the hut. The plan was to wait for the wood and brush to collapse in and then set the whole thing on fire. They also started setting up traps and ambushes around the perimeter. I may have been inspired by a previous discussion on this topic.

Anyway, my point is that the hut is useful, but reasonable tactics by the enemy make it just as much of a trap as a safe place.